TRUMP DIARY + EXTRAS!

It reads, in part: "Swearing In Ceremony of President Donald J. Trump - January 21st, 2017"

TRUMP DIARY - DAYS 4 & 5

Folks, yer old pal Jerky is many things, but perfect ain’t one of them. And so it is with the utmost humility that I beg your forgiveness if and when I miss something important.

Like, for instance, we’re about to delve into the diary for Days Four and Five in Trump’s America, and yet yesterday I forgot to point out that on Sunday we found out Trump never really intended to release his tax returns. All that talk about waiting for audits to be completed? Just more of Trump’s gold-plated bullshit.

Which brings us to Monday, January 23rd, Day Four in Trump’s America. By Trump's own reckoning, this was the real "Day One" of his administration, and he spent most of the morning signing executive orders--ditching the TPP, imposing a government hiring freeze ("JOBS!"), reviving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines--while surrounded by his milky-white Sausage Squad, his wraith-like dogsbody, Kellyanne Conwoman, hovering on the periphery like a scarecrow Smurfette all the while.

It was also a day on which we learned that Republicans, not content with simply laying the groundwork to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, have decided to get ambitious. Now they want to replace Medicaid with “block grants”, which is a terrible idea on so many levels, it’s enough to make you suspect Republicans just flat out hate the people they’re meant to represent.

Speaking of hate, it has now been established beyond any reasonable doubt that the GOP has long been waging war against women; in particular, a woman's right to control her reproductive destiny. This is even more true of the alt.right “manosphere”, the motley crew of pick-up artists, testosterone cream salesmen, and other so-called "men's rights activists" who helped Trump eke out his narrow (and likely rigged) electoral victory.

Well, if Trump didn’t hate women before--a bet no sober man would take--perhaps it’s in the context of Saturday's massive, coast-to-coast street protests that we should view his reinstatement of the so-called “global gag rule”. This onerous piece of legislation, beloved by Republican administrations since Reagan’s, forbids NGOs receiving US funds from providing, recommending, or even mentioning the word “abortion”. 

But Trump didn’t just reinstate the gag rule; he radically expanded it. The gag now covers all US government departments and agencies, a change that is virtually guaranteed to result in bloody, painful, easily preventable deaths, all around the world, beginning immediately. 

But for Trump, Monday wasn't all fun and games! Yes, brutalizing half the world's population with legislation designed to remind them of their proper, biologically predetermined station in life can be a hoot, but there was also work to be done. Work like, for instance:

• Strapping the muzzle on employees at numerous federal agencies in order to prevent them from promoting or discussing any work they might be doing in relation to climate change. 
• Making sure that, against precedent, convention, and the tenets of basic human decency, even more journalists mistakenly rounded up in Friday's illegal police kettling were hit with felony riot charges, meaning they potentially face ten years in jail.
• Watching a Bill O'reilly "special report" about crime in Chicago on FOX News, then going on Twitter and threatening to impose martial law there if "Chicago" doesn't "do something about" it.
• Attempting to humiliate the press by threatening to hang a huge panoramic photograph--which he claims "proves" his inauguration had record breaking attendance--in the White House press hall, only to have it all go wrong, like a mock epic version of a Jacobean revenge play.
• Issuing this hilarious press release to every accredited journalist in the White House Rolodex:

Well, that's all I've got for today, friends. Join me tomorrow, won't you? I'll be explaining why any Republican who isn't currently working on helping to have Trump peacefully removed from the Presidency due to his obviously deteriorating mental state is now thisclose to being guilty of the capital offense of treason. Toodles!

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SUGGESTED READINGS

1. With his latest for Esquire, a short-but-sweet, down and dirty bit of clear-eyed polemic entitled "This is Our Most Dangerously Retrograde Government in 150 Years", Charles P. Pierce has once again knocked one out of the park. Furthermore, his warning--"It's fun to laugh at Spicer and the infighting, but a regime is forming"--is a vitally important one.

2. Thank Godzilla (or Cthulhu, or that really big new version of King Kong or some other vast and teetering monstrosity) for that longest running of Conan O'Brien comedy bits, the brilliant Robert Smigel's Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog! In this edition, Triumph does Trump, as the cigar chomping sock-puppet pooch attends Traitor Trump's inauguration.

3. You've probably heard Charlie Sheen's Trump story. You know, the one about the platinum cufflinks? It's a funny story, yes? But did you know that Trump has been pulling that same con for as long as he's been in the papers? Check out this New York Post overview, which--considering that paper's "conservative" editorial slant--seems oddly unimpressed with the Bogus POTUS. I guess that's just familiarity breeding contempt.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Oliver Wendell Holmes famously summed up Franklin Roosevelt as a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament. Trump has a third-class intellect and a third-class temperament. The frightening surreality of what has happened to the United States has only begun to sink in."

- In his New York Magazine essay, titled "Donald Trump's Presidency is the Twilight Zone Episode About a Terrifying Six-Year-Old", Johnathan Chait hits the nail on the head.

DDD EXTRAS

• Check out the Useless Eater Blog, updated every day with new freaky shit! Also, if you're a Kubrick fanatic, maybe try going deep on my Kubrick U blog, which, despite having a lot of fluff, ephemera, and links to other people's stuff, does contain some original content of my own. All in the name of Stanley Kubrick! 

THE TAKEAWAY

Okay, so after some quiet deliberation, and based upon my experience of wasting Godzilla knows how much time chasing down exact dates and times before being willing to begin "composing", from hereon out, yer old pal Jerky ain't gonna to be so finicky about the dates anymore. General ballpark oughta do posterity just fine.